Cheaper Hanoi pork shows crops ease world food cost

Vendors sell food at the Cho Hom market in Hanoi. Cheaper feed grains mean lower costs and expanding meat supplies from poultry, hog and cattle producers. At an outdoor market in Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital, Trinh Thi Thanh pays 100,000 dong ($4.74) a kilogram for the pork her family eats more than any other meat. That’s down from 150,000 dong a few years ago, easing pressure on the cost of family meals that had been surging, she said. “In the past, price fevers happened much more often,” said Thanh, 63, a housewife and grandmother who buys food for a household of seven adults and two children. “Now, even when wages or gasoline prices go up, food costs in the market don’t advance, or rise very little.” Gains in food costs around the world have slowed as record harvests from India to the U.S. expanded supply and sent corn, soybeans, wheat, sugar and coffee into bear markets. The Standard & Poor’s GSCI Agriculture Index of eight crops tumbled 22 percent last year, the biggest annual drop since 1981. Morgan Stanley and Rabobank International cut their outlooks for farm goods in December, and costs are easing for buyers including Panera Bread Co. and General Mills Inc. The world’s food-import bill slid 3.2 percent in 2013 to $1.15 trillion, the United Nations estimates. Global costs are down 13 percent from an all-time high in February 2011, when floods and drought ruined crops and sparked protests in Africa and the Middle East, toppling leaders…